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How many products do you need to group together?

Many of our customers have seen an increase in the number of products that need to be grouped together to enable them to run with a single SMT setup to reduce the time taken for change-over from one product to another. The challenge is knowing which products can be incorporated in to a single group given the unique part numbers on each product and the feeder capacity of each machine in the line. Excel is very powerful but after a few products can quickly become overcome in its ability to handle many more products.

Within the Valor MSS suite we have a number of solutions to the various grouping requirements which I would like to describe for you today.

First is our standard SMT Machine Programming capability within Valor MSS Process Preparation. Here we provide the ability to manage a single group in a go-no go method. If there is sufficient capability across the machines in the line then you can keep adding more products until the capacity is exhausted. For a lot of users, this capability is sufficient for their grouping needs.

Next we provide the ability to select many more products and use the Optimization capability of Valor MSS Process Preparation to determine the minimum number of groups that are needed to support that set of products. Depending on the number of products, the number of unique part numbers and the capacity on the machines, one or more groups will be created to minimize the total number of groups needed to cover all products.

Then we also have the capability of Valor MSS Production Planning that can determine the groups needed to support hundreds and even thousands of products across multiple lines and minimize their overall production time.

So regardless of your needs for product grouping, the Valor MSS suite has the solution for you.

Here are the links to the Process Preparation and Production Planning modules of Valor MSS. Please take a look at this significant capability that we have to support SMT programming.